Morality And Religion Quotes

Do you remember, Meir, that epigram quoted in the name of Rabbi Johanan ben Zaccai: 'There is no truth unless there be a faith on which it may rest'? Ironically enough the only sure principle I have achieved is this which I have known almost all my life. And it is so. For all truths rest ultimately on some act of faith, geometry on axioms, the sciences on the assumptions of the objective existence and orderliness of the world of nature. In every realm one must lay down postulates or he shall have nothing at all. So with morality and religion. Faith and reason are not antagonists. On the contrary, salvation is through the commingling of the two, the former to establish first premises, the latter to purify them of confusion and to draw the fullness of their implications. It is not certainty which one acquires so, only plausibility, but that is the best we can hope for. ~ Milton Steinberg

At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? ~ William James

But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector. ~ Immanuel Kant

121.George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
122.Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
123.Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124.John Dewey – How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry
125.Alfred North Whitehead – An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
126.George Santayana – The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
127.Vladimir Lenin – The State and Revo ~ Mortimer J. Adler

A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who've never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages. ~ Leo Tolstoy

War, even in the best state of an army, with all the alleviations of courtesy and honor, with all the correctives of morality and religion, is nevertheless so great an evil, that to engage in it without a clear necessity is a crime of the blackest dye. When the necessity is clear, it then becomes a crime to shrink from it. ~ Robert Southey

Durkheim frequently criticized his contemporaries, such as Freud, who tried to explain morality and religion using only the psychology of individuals and their pairwise relationships. (God is just a father figure, said Freud.) Durkheim argued, in contrast, that Homo sapiens was really Homo duplex, a creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society. ~ Jonathan Haidt

The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: Great God, grant that twice two be not four. ~ Ivan Turgenev

One is in a state of hope because the basic physiological feeling is once again strong and rich; one trusts in God because the feeling of fullness and strength gives a sense of rest. Morality and religion belong entirely to the psychology of error: in every single case, cause and effect are confused; or truth is confused with the effects of believing something to be true; or a state of consciousness is confused with its physiological origins. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night. ~ Horace Greeley

Human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... would break the stronges cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. ~ John Adams

Israel is not just any small country. It is the only small country - the only country, period - whose neighbors publicly declare its very existence an affront to law, morality and religion and make its extinction an explicit , paramount national goal. Iran, Libya, and Iraq conduct foreign policies designed for the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. They choose their allies (Hamas, Hezbollah) and develop their weapons (suicide bombs, poison gas, anthrax, nuclear missiles) accordingly. Countries as far away as Malaysia will not allow a representative of Israel on their soil or even permit the showing of 'Schindler's List' lest it engender sympathy for Zion. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Mankind could point with pride to this fine flower of the human spirit--if it were not for one thing: namely that God is God and grace is grace. At this point begins the destruction of our illusions and of our cultural enthusiasm, the great destruction which God himself effects, and which the ancient myth of the tower of Babel typifies. 'And if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' Our way to the eternal is interrupted and we are plunged back into the depths from which we came, with out philosophy and art, our morality and religion. For another way now opens, the way of God to man, the way of revelation and grace, the way of Christ, the way of justification by faith alone. 'My ways are not your ways,' that is the answer now. It is not we who go to God, but God who comes to us. It is not religion that sets us right with God, for God alone can do this; it is his action on which we must depend. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time in the form of legislation and customs. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other. ~ John Adams

Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion! ~ Thomas Huxley

It is a very great mistake, and a very common one, even for well-read persons, to adopt the idea that the progress of the human race in the science of government, in the arts of civilization and refinement, and in the establishment of morality and religion, has been constantly and steadily towards improvement and perfection. ~ Samuel Freeman Miller

Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind. ~ Benjamin Rush

Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion ... To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes. ~ Noah Webster

In a religiously uniform culture, it is natural for people to take for granted the truth of the prevailing religion and its associated metaphysical propositions. ~ Richard Posner

I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and to go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again. ~ Mary Augusta Ward

The repentant, run-to-seed ultra-Leftists who have converted to humanitarianism, artificial inseminators of the widow and the orphan, themselves orphans of reality and malades imaginaires of politics, premature ejaculators of posthistory and hyperchondriacs of the dead body of ideology and morality. ~ Jean Baudrillard

I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me. ~ William Stanley Jevons

Lastly, to the memory of my beloved niece Mayyada, who cut her life short by committing suicide to escape the hellish marriage imposed upon her under Islamic Sharia Law: May her tragic account be an eternal inspiration to all who are privileged to live in free societies. May her story encourage all those who have been subjugated to tyranny - especially women - to become well informed and to persevere beyond fear and intimidation. And a challenge: To those whose spirits uphold the principles of justice and freedom of speech - May Mayyada's story, and that of many more whose stories have never been told, embolden you to speak up against the unjust and immoral treatment of women in the Muslim world. ~ Wafa Sultan

Actresses require protection in their art from blind abuse, from savage criticism. Their work is their religion, if they are seeking the best in their art, and to abuse that faith is to rob them, to dishonor them. ~ Nance O'Neil

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable
the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars. ~ Rodney Stark

The rule: when energy, 'negative' as it may be, moves without resistance, it easily sublimates and becomes raw energy of power and presence; resistance to it makes it freeze in its current state. For this reason, morality not only does not help our sexuality develop but also forces it to stay as it is. ~ Shai Tubali

Religion now has degenerated and it has turned into a wolf; it has opened its mouth to show his ugly teeth; its spreading fear instead of love; and science has hidden in a corner like a lamb, trembling with fear! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Even religious people are vulnerable to this longing. Those who belong to communities of faith have acquired a certain patience with what is sometimes called organized religion. They have learned to forgive themselves. They do not expect their institutions to stand in for God, and they are happy to use inherited maps for some of life's journeys. They do not need to walk off every cliff all by themselves. Yet they too can harbor the sense that there is more to life that they are being shown. Where is the secret hidden? Who has the key to the treasure box of More? ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

I give you comfort. I give you peace. I give you joy. I give you hope. I give you life."

Jesus kept talking to her.

"I give you strength. I give you love. I give you power. I give you Me."

Jennifer started jumping up and down and hugging Jesus. ~ Sunshine Rodgers

Is it true that dogmatism "means assertiveness without knowledge?" How do you know that the assertiveness is without knowledge? When the eleven disciples asserted that Christ appeared to them in the upper room after his resurrection, and they thrust their hands in the wounds in his side and his hands, was it assertion without knowledge? Their statement is dogmatic, and justly so. True religion is dogmatic. All truth is dogmatic. . . . The prophets were dogmatic, and when they received revelation, had visions and visitations from heavenly personages, they knew it, they were not deceived, and their assertions were dogmatic, righteously so. ~ Joseph Fielding Smith

There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms
if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us
the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

[It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do not intuit this perfection, but can derive it solely from our concepts, of which morality is the foremost one, but because if we do not do this (which, if we did, would be a crude circle in explanation), the concept of his will that is left over to us, the attributes of the desire for glory and domination, bound up with frightful representations of power and vengeance, would have to make a foundation for a system of morals that is directly opposed to morality. ~ Immanuel Kant

Israel is the historical definition of the specific nature of the religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, national interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we have the Christian religion. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

Neurotic guilt," like that often fostered by religion, is a different matter. It tends to be excessive and inappropriate, based on the expectations of others instead of personal values or dwelling on the error rather than using the guilt feelings to make a change. In your religious experience, committing a sin made you a sinner, a bad deed made a bad person. This global condemnation creates low self-worth and more neurotic guilt and misery. ~ Marlene Winell

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking."
All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder. ~ Milan Kundera

The more we talk about the epidemic as an individual disease phenomenon or a moral failing, the easier it is to obfuscate and ignore the social and economic conditions that predispose certain individuals to addiction. The fix isn't more Suboxone or lectures on morality but rather a reinvigorated democracy that provides a pathway for meaningful work, with a living wage, for everybody. ~ Beth Macy

And the question of Wester religion," Flattery said, "is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking? ~ Frank Herbert

That which the people called Quakers lay down as a main fundamental in religion is this- That God, through Christ, hath placed a principle in every man, to inform him of his duty, and to enable him to do it; and that those that live up to this principle are the people of God, and those that live in disobedience to it, are not God's people, whatever name they may bear, or profession they may make of religion. This is their ancient, first, and standing testimony: with this they began, and this they bore, and do bear to the world. ~ William Penn

The espousal of the doctrine of Negro inferiority by the South was primarily because of economic motives and the inter-connected political urge necessary to support slave industry; but to the watching world it sounded like the carefully thought out result of experience and reason; and because of this it was singularly disastrous for modern civilization science and religion, in art and government, as well as in industry. The South could say that the Negro, even when brought into modern civilization, could not be civilized, and that, therefore, he and the other colored peoples of the world were so far inferior to the whites that the white world had a right to rule mankind for their own selfish interests. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

When I'm brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I'm cruel, cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can't respect myself. That's the divine retribution I believe in ~ Ken Follett

The sooner the jihadis go up to their imagined #heaven, the sooner our earth would be a heaven. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?
[Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius illustrating his objection to heliocentrism due to the Bible's support of geocentrism] ~ Abraham Calovius

Have you ever observed somebody go through a religious conversion? The person seems perfectly reasonable to you and has no particular concern for religion. Then a parent, friend or child dies or he gets a serious illness or is involved in a car accident. In just a matter of weeks, he seeks out and finds the answers to all of life's questions and starts studying and spouting all sorts of doctrine. During such a window of vulnerability, religion can commandeer a person's brain. ~ Darrel Ray

Many Nigerians believe that Babangida 'institutionalized corruption', yet few admit their own complicity in creating the situation where corruption became the norm. The citizenry are simultaneously victims, accomplices and active participants in their own corrupt downfall. Corruption in Nigeria is not just an offshoot of collapsed social and governmental institutions, nor is it the result of a hostile economic environment. The roots go much deeper and are more symptomatic of a residual breakdown of Nigerian societal values and morality. It is the result of a nationwide refusal to condemn dishonesty... While the government must take blame for not cracking down on corruption, the public deserves its share of blame for encouraging it, and letting the government get away with it. ~ Max Siollun

I feel that religion can be used as a tool to guide your life and help you connect with other people. ~ Zach Anner

The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations
there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole.
an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself
is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations. ~ Jean-Henri Merle D'Aubigne

I'm frustrated and sad to think of all the good people who have abandoned Christianity because they felt they had to choose between their faith and their intellectual integrity or between their religion and their compassion. I'm heartbroken to think of all the new ideas they could have contributed had someone not told them that new ideas were unwelcome ~ Rachel Held Evans

If we talk about the living oracles and want to pay respect to them, how shall we do this? Shall we do it by never reading their words-by paying not attention to that which they say? That is a very poor way of doing.
We ought to listen to their words. When we cannot hear their words, we should read them; for they are the words of the authorized servants of God. I feel that there is a great neglect among us in this respect.
CR, 1897, 38, George Q. Cannon (CR is Reports of the General Conferences of the Church) ~ John Andreas Widtsoe

God, as represented by Scripture, by nature is the true non-conformist. He does not need to conform to any truth; He does not need to conform to some moral law. It proclaims that He is the Truth; He defines Morality: the Great I Am, the Beginning and the End who radiates all that is Holy. Therefore, and unless we too were wholly holy and omniscient, we would do well to understand at the very least that even if this God were to wipe away all in existence, then despite my opinion or your opinion, His decision would be objectively good and moral simply because He is the one doing it. ~ Criss Jami

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off. ~ Stephen King

All religions seem alike to me, one mass of absurdities and lies - I know that there is a God, but I know no more of him; and I believe that all those are liars who pretend to know more than I do. ~ Mary Martha Sherwood

Religion must now recognize that our deep antisocial impulses when denied and repressed do not disappear miraculously from reality; the more we treat them like criminals, the more vengeance they take against us. Adults who strive for total repression of their impulses in the realm of imagination wreak havoc either on their bodies or their spirits.
The religion of the future should take a page from the notebook of the psychotherapist, encouraging men to tolerate their unacceptable impulses, to sublimate them, and at the same time to discipline themselves to a finer and more generous program of action. It must strengthen mature men and women to realize that everyone has desires and fantasies antisocial in nature. Only when their presence is acknowledged rather than repressed can they be prevented from exercising dominion over us in the realm of action. ~ Joshua Loth Liebman

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. ~ Bertrand Russell